Japan just needs to play its cards well.
Last month, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe became the first head of government to visit the U.S. president-elect in his New York tower. It was a chance to establish a personal rapport, and to gauge more precisely where Donald Trump stands vis-a-vis Japan, China, North Korea, and issues surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In the months leading to the November election, Trump raised alarm in Japan by alluding that the country should arm itself with nuclear weapons in order to better protect itself against an unpredictable North Korea, and the regional bulling of a

The Empire Strikes Back, An Interview With Grzegorz Kostrzewa-Zorbasfrom the book A Blow From the Leftby Jacek Kurski and Piotr Semka
translated by Marcin Wiesiolek,
forward by Joshua Spero

FOREWORD

The following incisive and revealing interview raises important questions and seriously reassesses some of the policies conducted by both the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Polish national leadership during the first years of the post-Communist era in Poland. Mr. Grzegorz Kostrzewa-Zorbas, one of the prominent Solidarity underground activists who focused on foreign policy issues during the 1980's and one of the first to be appointed as a non-Communist to the ministry, depicts the unusual complexity of foreign policy issues he helped to initiate and implement while serving in senior-level positions from 1990-1991.

Clearly, across Europe democracy is hijacked by populist eurosceptics. Like hyenas and vultures, they gang up in ever greater number, foretasting the feast on a morbidly wounded EU. In France, Francois Hollande did not win the French presidential elections; Nicolas Sarkozy lost them. But certainly not to the French socialist candidate. He fell prey to the far-right eurosceptic Marine Le Pen and her Front National. And in Greece the two dominant pro-EU parties fell prey to the marginal eurosceptic forces. The Pyrrhic success of Nea Democratia to increase its nominal parliamentary representation vis-a-vis PASOK from the previous elections is largely a result of a strategic vote by the pro-European voters in the country who judged the party and its leader, Antonis Samaras, as a better front runner against the eurosceptic extremist parties. In Finland, the NCP and the Social Democrats lost to the True Finns in the 2011 elections, and the Dutch government fell recently after the euroscepti…